As is well known to industrial workers, particularly in the automotive and in aircraft trades, it is frequently necessary to start or remove nuts from studs and bolts which are located in relatively inaccessible positions. Common practice is for the worker to hold the wrench in one hand and to use the other hand to initially position the nut for threading, or to catch the nut after it is unthreaded. When working at an appreciable elevation, as with aircraft, the nut may be easily lost, particularly where the worker must use one hand for safety or balance. Also, the bolt or stud may be positioned between two closely adjacent parts so that it is difficult to place or remove the nut, under any circumstances. The annoyance of not being able to easily start a nut, or attending the accidental loss of a nut with the necessity of retrieval, is well known to even the casual user of tools of the type described.
Numerous efforts have been made to develop tools which simplify the task of starting or removing nuts from threaded members, such as studs and bolts. One commercial variation of an open-end wrench, for example, is provided with a box wrench at one end which may be offset for hand clearance. However, use of a box wrench attachment of the type described does not solve the problem of loss of nuts, since the box wrench must necessarily have an opening of sufficient internal diameter to pass easily over the nut. Also, such arrangement negates the possibility of jaws of differing width at either end of the wrench, as is customary with the standard open-end wrench.
More recently, nut holding attachments have been specifically devised for open-end wrenches, such devices being intended to hold the nut in place between the jaws of the wrench uring the starting of the nut. Such devices are disclosed for example in Malcolm U.S. Pat. No. 2,369,400 and Becker U.S. Pat. No. 2,557,628. However, such devices, which are placed externally of the wrench, have the disadvantage of being easily dislodged. They also present protrusions and projections which interfere with use of the wrench, and which cause the attachments to be discarded by the worker as generally useless for day to day operations. They also have the disadvantage of greatly increasing the cost of the wrench. A principal defect of such attachment means is their inability to effectively hold a nut within the jaws of a wrench so that the tool can be easily used for the intended purpose.